Knowing and Seeing

Knowing and Seeing presents the meditation teachings delivered by the Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw during a two-month retreat for monks and nuns in Taiwan. Grounded in the Pāli Canon, commentaries, and the classical framework of the Visuddhimagga, the book offers a systematic and practice-oriented exposition of the threefold training in morality, concentration, and wisdom. Its central objective is to explain how a meditator may directly know and see the Four Noble Truths and ultimately realize Nibbāna. The book begins with the development of concentration through mindfulness of breathing, the thirty-two parts of the body, skeleton meditation, the ten kasiṇas, and the four immaterial attainments. It then explains the cultivation of the four sublime abidings—loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity—together with protective meditations such as recollection of the Buddha, foulness meditation, and recollection of death. Subsequent sections describe how strong concentration supports insight into ultimate materiality and mentality. The practitioner is instructed to discern rūpa-kalāpas, the twenty-eight kinds of materiality, cognitive processes, mental factors, and the relationship between mind and matter. The text further explains how to examine dependent origination across past, present, and future lives, and how to develop successive vipassanā knowledges by contemplating impermanence, suffering, and non-self. The final stages lead toward direct knowledge of Nibbāna, the development of the supramundane paths and fruitions, and liberation from rebirth. Additional chapters discuss the Buddha’s expectations for his disciples, the responsibilities of Buddhist practitioners, and the most superior forms of offering. Questions and answers from retreat participants clarify doctrinal and practical issues throughout the volume.